Typography articles

I had created some neat icons for a website redesign I was doing, and I previewed the new site on an old iPad. The layout looked OK at normal size, but zooming in to part of the page, I suddenly saw that my icon was a blurry mess, while the text-based header was still crisp and sharp. On a newer Retina-display iPad, the icons didn’t...

Talent, discipline, and creativity just might constitute a triple threat in the world of design; and if it does, 21-year-old Peter Tarka easily meets the definition. Each month, the ambitious Poland-based creative produces a collection of mesmerizing 3D typographic art. Currently a graphic designer and illustrator...

It’s long been thought that Arial is to Helvetica what the ugly step sister is to Cinderella. Helvetica was designed in Germany in the 1950s to compete with Akzidenz Grotesk; Arial was designed in America in the early 1980s, believed by many to be a move by Microsoft to supply a Helvetica-like font as part of its TrueType specification...

Since the very earliest illuminated manuscripts, dating back to the 5th century AD, we’ve associated flora with enlarged type. Perhaps it’s something to do with the way plants repeat the same shapes, echoed by type. Or perhaps it’s simply that we can bend an organic shape to our design without compromising its integrity....

With increasing diversity in monitor sizes, it's not practical to design single blocks of text that take up the entire width of the screen. The traditional solution is to split text into columns manually, which is very time intensive; or to split text dynamically with JavaScript, which doesn't function universally. Besides,...

First it was the Capulets versus the Montagues; then it was Coke versus Pepsi; and the latest epic battle? Serif versus sans-serif, of course. Lucky for us, the crew at UrbanFonts has produced a nifty infographic to help clarify the age-old rivalry between serif and sans. Brief, yet information-packed, it covers everything...

When I was in middle school, I took a sign language class. At the time, it struck me as interesting that some words and letters looked exactly like the thing being described, while others seemingly had no relation. That’s why I’m intrigued by what New York designer Tien-Min Liao has undertaken as a typographic challenge....

As a writer, I’m particularly drawn to typographic art. Perhaps it’s because the combination of word and art speaks to both the left brain and the right brain — and therein lies the magic. Designer Ji Lee’s book entitled Word as Image brilliantly illustrates the power of “picturing words”. Currently Facebook’s...

If there's one thing every designer needs in their toolkit, it's a workhorse font. A workhorse font is the typeface you turn to again and again; it's your first stop; your default option. Your workhorse font is deeply entrenched in your personal style, it defines your portfolio even more than your client list. Not too long ago...

I guess a more suitable title might be ‘is Photoshop still an appropriate tool for designing typography on the web?’ But that lacks the dramatic appeal of the above. Like many of you, I have always used Photoshop to create mock-up compositions of my designs. For as long as I can remember it has been the industry standard and...

Fonts can become synonymous with brands. Picture, for example, "Yahoo", "Disney", or the masthead for "The New York Times"; in each case, the brand and the typeface are virtually interchangeable. With this in mind, a team of designers isn’t just rebranding a company — they’re rebranding a city. In the 1940s, Chattanooga,...

Is there anything better than a font named after the Spanish word for cockroach? Maybe a font named after that combined with the word "future"? Futuracha is just that font. It's a beautiful display font that's great for things like logos or posters. Because of how stylized it is, it's not suitable for body copy. But that doesn't...

It's the trend that people are calling for this year. But it's really a trend that's been here for the past couple of years. Typography is a concept that's been practiced for many centuries. And it's one that's going to stick around for years to come. What is it about typography that makes everyone go crazy? It has this artistic...

While typography is typically a two-dimensional proposition, the communication design students at the University of Applied Science in Dusseldorf have expanded the practice to 3-D. As an exercise in three-dimensional letterforms and their applications, the school’s budding designers crafted typographic furniture...